1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a microscope image pickup system for use in a fluorescent observation.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the medical and biological fields, a fluorescent observation method is used when protein, a gene, etc. in a cell of a living body are observed by a microscope. A fluorescent observation is a method in which a cell of a living body having a fluorescence indicator is irradiated with illumination light (exciting light) having a wavelength of only a specific width so that light having a wavelength (fluorescence) longer than that of the exciting light emitted from the cell of the living body. In addition, there are various capturing methods for capturing and displaying the fluorescence emitted from a cell of a living body, and images such as still images, moving pictures, etc. captured by an electronic image pickup device are not recorded, but preview images of a sample are displayed in real time.
However, a cell of a living body has the property of being damaged by the irradiation of exciting light, and gradually does no emit fluorescence in the process of the fluorescent observation. The phenomenon is referred to as fading. Therefore, some countermeasures have been devised not to make the sample of the cell of a living body faded.
For example, there is a microscope image pickup system for open/close controlling a cutoff device for a light source of a microscope depending on the operation mode of the image pickup device (for example, refer to Japanese Published Patent Application No. 2005-316036). The microscope image pickup system constantly irradiates a sample with exciting light when a preview image is displayed, and cuts off the exciting light after acquiring a still image when the still image is to be acquired. Thus, a sample can be protected from being unnecessarily irradiated by the exciting light. As a result, the fading of the sample can be suppressed.